


Little Ghosts

by coffee-in-bed (littlemel)



Category: Ella Enchanted - All Media Types
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Miscarriage, Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-05-07
Updated: 2005-05-07
Packaged: 2018-03-20 01:36:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3631728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littlemel/pseuds/coffee-in-bed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She cries when she sees the blood; she doesn't know what else to do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Little Ghosts

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Written for a friend who asked for Ella/Char "mel-style," and then not only encouraged this insanity, but held my hand through the whole thing.

Ella likes to walk in the fruit orchard at mid-day, when the blossoms are full and the air is thickly sweet, buzzing with the fat bees flitting from flower to flower. The old apple tree is her favorite, the trunk perfectly curved to fit against her back. She brings books from the expansive library outside with her, big dusty tomes with brittle yellow pages that smell of time.

She falls asleep in the cool green shade and dreams of a little boy with her dark hair and Char's bright eyes, his laugh loud and clear as a bell. He's running through the orchard with a fistful of flowers, pale purple lilacs and white snapdragons; he calls for his mother and Ella sees herself turn and throw her arms wide, crushing the flowers between them as she picks him up.  
  
When she wakes, the sun is an hour lower in the sky and bells are ringing somewhere in the castle. Her hands are folded across her belly and she laughs, picks lilacs and snapdragons on her way back inside; they fall from her hand, trampled underfoot when Char sweeps her up and swings her around.

*

Winter comes early that year, the first snow falling just a few weeks after the autumn harvest. They light roaring fires, but the stone walls of the castle hold a chill that Ella can never quite shake except at night, in bed under the furs with Char curled up against her. She's ill in the mornings and sometimes in the afternoons. The smell of milk and eggs turns her stomach; she craves apples.

Her belly rounds out softly, becomes a favorite resting place for Char's head in the quiet mornings before they leave the warm confines of their bed. She doesn't tell him about her dream, and is secretly thrilled when he starts referring to the baby as "our little king."

"What if it's a girl?" she teases, running her fingers through Char's tangled curls.

"Then we shall call her princess."

"Not queen?" She tugs none-too-gently on Char's hair, and he laughs.

"Someday, certainly." He kisses Ella's stomach, just below her navel, and turns his face into her cupped hand. A log pops in the fireplace and she thinks back to the inn in Giantville all those long months ago, of telling him he would be a great king, and knows with that same certainty that he will be a great father as well. She nods and closes her eyes, humming contentedly.

*

The unexpected cold spell wreaks havoc on the farms in the kingdom, and Char's days are busy. Ella helps as much as she can, but in truth there isn't much to be done. It will be a hard winter for everyone, and she can only hope the early freeze will make the spring crops sweeter.

She counts off the weeks on her fingers, startled to realize she's almost four months along already. Spring is still five months off, Mother Nature having skipped autumn nearly altogether. She'll be a mother by the first thaw, unless that comes early, too. She hopes it does.

The library, with its fireplace large enough to stand in, is the only room that gets warm enough to comfortably spend any length of time in. She reads the days away, teaching herself the languages of the kingdom, practicing the words aloud and wondering if the baby can hear her, if he understands. A heavy volume of Ayorthaian poetry sits open on the long table; she props it on her lap and reads herself and the baby to sleep in front of the fire, her feet warm and the weak winter sunlight warming her face.

*  
  
She wakes on a cold morning with a sharp pain low in her stomach, between her hipbones. She's become accustomed to the constant slight ache in her back and legs, but this is different; this is wrong, she can feel it. Her first instinct is to wake Char, to burrow further under the furs and into the warm circle of his arms, but when she turns, the bed is empty beside her.

He's prone to bouts of sleeplessness, and she knows she's likely to find him in the library, reading by firelight, or in the kitchen having tea, but she doesn't move, almost too afraid to breathe. She forces herself to take a deep breath, full of dusty air and the safe smell of her own skin and Char's, of the fire behind the grate, but there's a tang of copper in her mouth when she swallows.  
  
She slips carefully out of the bed, her heart battering her ribcage, making her dizzy. Wet warmth seeps down her leg as soon as her feet touch the cold stone floor and she bites her lip, tiptoeing across the room to the window before lifting the hem of her shift with shaking fingers.

She cries when she sees the blood; she doesn't know what else to do.

*

No one has bothered clearing the ankle-deep snow from the pathways through the orchard, and Ella's stockinged feet are numb as she plods through it. The wind is fierce, whipping her hair around her face and stinging her cheeks, and the only thing louder than her chattering teeth is the roar of her blood in her ears. She keeps her hands under her heavy velvet cloak, cupped around this impossibly small thing she's still trying to protect, though it's long gone.

If only it were spring already, or still those last lazy days of summer, the orchard would be in bloom. But the trees are all bare now, skeletal against the steely sky. From some distant corner of the kingdom, bells chime the matins.

Ella digs through snow and frozen earth with her bare hands, red from scraping at rocks and tree roots, raw from the cold. The blood under her fingernails is hers and his -- the baby's, Char's, _theirs_ , and the pain between her legs aches like emptiness.

"I'm sorry," she says, and the wind rattles through the trees like a dirge.

*

"Ella, there you are." Char's voice sounds very distant, muffled by the snow. She turns and he's standing under the trellis where the roses grow in the summer, pink and yellow, but the vine is dormant now, sinister-looking. "What are you doing?"

The snow crunches under his boots as he approaches, his cautious smile fading into panicked confusion as his eyes flicker from her face to the red snow, her bloodstained hands. It seems to take him days to reach her.

"What happened?" There's an edge of hysteria in his voice; his hands are clammy on her cheeks.

"He's gone," she whispers. Her throat feels shredded. "I lost him, our little king."

He slides one arm behind her knees and the other around her shoulders, lifting her easily. She clings to him, sobbing into his neck as he carries her inside. He tries to calm her, but she can feel his breathing go wet and uneven. His voice cracks as he hollers for someone to get the physician.  
  
*

The examination is quick and perfunctory; Ella lies as still as she can, crying through the pain, tears sliding down her temples and catching in her hair. Char holds her hand, lets her squeeze his fingers until she feels the delicate grind of bone.

"Nothing more to be done," the physician says, shaking his head. "She'll bleed for several days, but what's done is done." He shrugs. "There will be other children. At least you know she is not barren."

"Yes, thank you," Ella says, quietly dismissive. The physician blinks, startled; he wasn't speaking to her and they both know it, but she wants him gone. "We'll send for you if we need you."

"Of course, Your Majesty." He bows out of the room and Char closes the heavy door behind him, against the flurry of whispers in the hall. By the time she's stopped bleeding, the entire kingdom will know. She doesn't care.

*

She stays in bed most of the day, not asleep but not really awake either. Char brings her the book of Ayorthaian poems, brings her a pot of sweet tea, but she won't drink. A hot bath does nothing but make her skin feel raw; the water is pink when she gets out.

Char helps her into the chair by the fireplace when she complains of a chill, adding on two more logs to the fire and tucking a fur around her legs. "There will be other children, Ella," he says softly, laying his head on her lap. "Maybe a girl, and she can be our queen. She can be it, it doesn't matter."

She shoves at him weakly, too tired to cry or yell or scream the way she wants to. "It doesn't matter," she says, rubbing at her eyes with the heels of her hands, and she can still smell the blood on them. "I don't _care_ who gets the throne, I just don't want to lose my children!"

He looks for a moment like he's been slapped, a lifetime of the importance of producing an heir shaken by the simple plea of a grieving mother. "I didn't... I wasn't..." he stammers, and pauses to touch her face. "I wasn't even thinking. Ella, I'm sorry."

His eyes flash wetly and she has to look away. The memory of her dream beneath the apple tree is suddenly too vivid; she remembers too well those eyes in another face.

*

Ella sleeps through the long dark days of the next few weeks. She bleeds, and stops, and bleeds again, right on time, leaving her both sad and relieved. Char keeps a careful distance at first, unsure of himself and afraid to touch her, but by the new year she's reaching for him in the night, pulling him to her, letting him in again.

By the first thaw, the farmers are predicting the finest crop yet, and Ella is with child again. By the time she is beginning to show, a patch of snapdragons have bloomed beneath the apple tree.

*

Ella dozes in the orchard on a hot summer afternoon, a small bouquet of lilacs that Florian picked for her earlier resting across the swell of her stomach. Char's voice drifts through the canopy of leaves, their sons' laughter bubbling underneath it. She smiles, the smell of the blossoms and drone of the bees lulling her into dreams of the two sons she has now, Florian and little Charmont, and of the baby growing in her belly.

She sees two boys running in the meadow behind the orchard, a tiny girl with pale gold hair and chocolate-colored eyes weaving a crown of daisies; Ella recognizes her own smile on the child's face.

But there are four, always four when she sleeps under the apple tree, and the youngest boy is also the oldest; her first, the one who never grows up, her little king.


End file.
